Last (x) movies you saw (II)

I just saw Booksmart and laughed literally all the way through. The characters are completely hyper-realised, but that just throws you into their headspace more. The closest analogue for me is 21 Jump Street, but this is much more charming.

From the trailer, Booksmart looked like Superbad with a dollop of Yas Queen feminism

You're not wrong, but by the end of the movie our "woke" Cinderellas have not only gone to the ball, but learned to recognize that their peers are more than just the stereotypes out of the past three or four decades of teen movies. Of course, the whole thing is a blue-state fantasy (and probably a red-state nightmare).

Before the movie I saw a red-band trailer for what appeared to be be Superbad in a middle school (possibly elementary school?), starting with three boys who have found a parent's sex toys (of course, not recognizing them as such). THAT was disturbing.

Anemic Cinema (Duchamp, 1926)
A Corner in Wheat (Griffith, 1909)
The Night Club Lady (Cummings, 1932)
Jeffries Jr. (McCarey, 1924)
The Messenger Boy (Ludwig, 1931)
Booksmart (Wilde, 2019)
Mabel at the Wheel (Normand & Sennett, 1914)
Mabel's Busy Day (Normand, 1914)
The Girl in the Arm-Chair (Guy-Blache, 1912)
One Step Behind the Seraphim (Sandu, 2017)

good couple of weeks

Machorka-Muff (Straub, Huillet, 1963) 6/10
Thief (Mann, 1981) 7/10
New Rose Hotel (Ferrara, 1998) 8/10
The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski, 1991) 7/10
The Nun (Rivette, 1966) 8/10
The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou, 1983) 8/10
That Day, on the Beach (Yang, 1983) 9/10
*A Brighter Summer Day (Yang, 1991) 10/10
Rebels of the Neon God (Tsai, 1992) 7/10

A Brighter Summer Day was amazing I thought

also really liked Rebels of the Neon God, although on first viewing not as much as Goodbye, Dragon Inn or Stray Dogs

totally, nothing really comes close to a brighter summer day for me; and only getting richer as i find myself following the plot mechanics less.

feel the same about rebels (tho yet to see stray dogs!), very charming to see something that feels like such a debut. tsai and lee really were born to make films together

LOcal African film festival. So Ko Knanga the south African film set in the francophone Congolese ex-pat community showing a naive girl arriving from Congo and getting messed around by trhe partner of her aunt. Could have done with some script editing.

Finding Fela the film based around teh Fela on Broadway show. I think I saw thsi around teh time i saw the production of the stage show in London but can't think when i saw that. I'm seeing 2011 as when it was first on in London but i didn't think it was then, can't tie it in mentally with any significant point in my life to the time. & i thought 2011 would have done.
Combines footage from the show and its rehearsals with a biography of Fela which is quite good. & has me reassessing his later work which I hadn't payed much attention to previously. Worths eeing anyway. As was the stage show, quite amazing stamina on the performer's part 3 hours of major energetic dancing from a lot of them.

Anbessa
a film about a 10 year old boy living in a shack he's been moved to since a condominium has been set up on the land his farm used to sit on. Nice little film.

Queen of Katwe a film about a chess playing girl from Uganda which I'd already seen last year. Was put on because they couldn't get Finding fela to play. So that got put off til the day after.
It was made by a division of Disney which means it is a bit glossier tahn it might have been, possibly not as glossy as it could have been though. Quite nice, not sure how well it repays multiple screenings though.

The Fisherman
short with an ageing fisherman meeting a talking Fish.

Rebels of the Neon God is not as great as what comes later, but already Vive l'Amour is probably a masterpiece. For some reason I've never watched The River, should fix that as soon as possible.

The River is a big uncomfortable bummer, iirc.

The Man From Hong Kong (Trenchard-Smith 1975) 📺
Hard Ticket To Hawaii [4K restoration] (Andy Sidaris, Arlene Sidaris 1987)
Origin Story (Kulap Vilaysack 2019) 📺
Teacher's Pet (George Seaton, Fay Kanin, Michael Kanin 1957) 📺
* John Wick (Stahelski, Leitch, Kolstad 2014) 📺
* John Wick: Chapter 2 (Stahelski, Kolstad 2017) 📺
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (Stahelski, Kolstad, Hatten, Collins, Abrams 2019)
Captain Marvel (Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, Nicole Perlman, Meg LeFauve, Geneva Robertson-Dworet 2019) 🚗
Avengers: Endgame (Russo, Russo, Markus, McFeely 2019) 🚗
The Bigamist (Ida Lupino, Collier Young 1953)
In Fabric (Strickland 2019)
Crystal Swan (Darya Zhuk, Helga Landauer 2018)
Deadwood (Minahan, Milch, Pizzolato 2019) 📺

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Hitchcock, 1941) - 8/10
Letter Never Sent (Kalatozov, 1960) - 9/10
The Blue Angel (Sternberg, 1930) - 9/10
The Pride of the Yankees (Wood, 1942) - 7/10
The Warped Ones (Kurahara, 1960) - 6/10
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969) - 5/10
To Sleep with Anger (Burnett, 1990) - 6/10

Three Days of the Condor (Pollack, 1975) - 10/10
Little Women (Cukor, 1933) - 7/10
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Varda, 1977) - 9/10
Roseland (Ivory, 1977) - 6/10
Women of the Night (Mizoguchi, 1948) - 8/10
Pearls of the Deep (various, 1966) - 5/10
*Let the Sunshine In (Denis, 2017) - 10/10
Mur Murs (Varda, 1981) - 8/10
Sudden Fear (Miller, 1952) - 8/10

John Wick 3 (Stahelski, 2019)
Claire's Camera (Hong, 2018)
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (Fassbinder, 1975)
The Ear (Kachyna, 1970)
Alexander Nevsky (Eisenstein, 1938)
Moonrise (Borzage, 1948)
Deadwood (Minahan, 2019)
Our Man in Havana (Reed, 1959)
Isle of Dogs (Anderson, 2018)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Dougherty, 2019)
Frankenstein (short - Dawley, 1910)
The Tram (short 0 Kieślowski, 1966)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Mungiu, 2007)

MUBI:

The Fire (Schnitman, 2015)
Machorka-Muff (Straub/Huillet, 1963)
The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski, 1991)
Not Reconciled (Straub/Huillet, 1965)

Cinema:
Maborosi (Kore-eda, 1995)
A Brighter Summer Day (Yang, 1991)

The MUBI season of the Straub/Huillet is a really interesting experiment by itself. Especially if you are (as I was) watching Not Reconciled after a night drinking! Gotta say I am really looking forward to mangled soundtracks, lack of subs, Marxism and history lessons over the next little while.

Catching Maborosi at the cinema was wonderful, had only seen it as a shagged out torrent where the use of natural light turned pitch black. One of the great films around grief, and how sometimes there just are no answers. Finally A Brighter Summer Day was an exhausting (at four hours with a short break) Sunday evening screening, the kind of experience I always found the most rewarding when actually going out to the cinema.

Ha, I came back from a friend’s degree show last night and decided not to watch not reconciled precisely because I thought I was too drunk for it

I also saw maborosi at the cinema, and still walking which I loved

I watched it once sober and I can tell you now it didn't make much of a difference.

not reconciled my fav shraub/huillet i've seen so far, though immediately felt like i needed to rewatch it. should say if yr at any more of close up/taiwanese season xyzzzz, feel free to say hi (i'm usually reading a book)

I am also reading a book if I go on my own. But yes will let you know, intend to be at a couple more.

I loved The Souvenir even though it alienated most of my set. At my showing yesterday I counted three walkouts and a pair of old ladies whom I had to shush because the film bored them enough to inspire them to jabber.

*Service With a Smile (Mack, 1934)
*Good Morning, Eve! (Mack, 1934)
*What, No Men? (Staub, 1935)
Gypsy Sweetheart (Staub, 1935)
*Okay, Jose (Staub, 1935)
Carnival Day (Staub, 1936)
La Cigarette (Dulac, 1919)
The Smiling Madame Beudet (Dulac, 1923)
The Running Actress (Moon, 2017)
*Bone Crushers (Wing, 1933)
Der Raub der Mona Lisa (von Bolvary, 1931)
Madame Racketeer (Gribble & Hall, 1932)

The Principal Enemy (1974, Sanjinés) 6/10
Madeline’s Madeline (2018, Decker) 3/10
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987, Hara) 9/10
Becket (1964, Glenville) 5/10
City of Lost Souls (1983, von Praunheim) 6/10
Soleil O (1967, Hondo) 9/10
Lover Come Back (1961, Mann) 7/10
*King of New York (1990, Ferrara) 7/10
The Dupes (1973, Saleh) 8/10
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (2017, Wilkerson) 7/10
*Micki & Maude (1984, Edwards) 6/10

The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987, Hara) 9/10

astonishing film

you all have access to such obscure films

I'm envious

ok, The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On appears to be available on netflix dvd, so I will watch it

Gonna see it tomorrow at the MoMA

Morbius, why didn't you like Becket?

Gassy talk and risible gayness.

MoMA is having a Kazuo Hara retro, and he was there for the Emperor's Naked Army Marches On post-screening discussion the other night with... Michael Moore (long a champion of the film). In the Q&A, a gent got up and offered that the protagonist of the doc, having shot and nearly killed the son of one of the former army officers, was not a crusader. "This guy is a NUT!"

The speaker was the avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs. Only in New York.

Gassy talk and risible gayness.

New board description.

For the Birds was a devastating portrait of mental illness and end of empire america; bummed me out for days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfUY9lraOKU

*Quiet Please! (Stevens, 1933)
Tango Tangles (Sennett, 1914)
Microhabitat (Jeon, 2017)
Men in Black: International (Gray, 2019)
45 Minutes From Hollywood (Guiol, 1926)
The Matrimaniac (Powell, 1916)
The Dead Don't Die (Jarmusch, 2019)

MUBI:

Madeleine's Madeline (Decker, 2019)
Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times, or, Perhaps One Day Rome Will Allow Herself to Choose in Her Turn (Straub/Huillet, 1970)

Cinema:

Terrorizers (Yang, 1986)

Funeral Parade of Roses(Matsumoto, 1969) 8/10
Madeline’s Madeline (Decker, 2018) 5/10
Not Reconciled... (Huillet, Straub, 1965) 9/10
Nervous Translation (Seno, 2017) 8/10
Birds of Passage (Guerra, 2018) 7/10
L’Intrus (Denis, 2004) 9/10
Flores (Jacome, 2017) 5/10
*The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939) 10/10
North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959) 9/10
Dust in the Wind (Hou, 1986) 8/10
Norte: The End of History (Diaz, 2014) 8/10
Stray Dogs (Tsai, 2013) 10/10

The Beach Bum 4/5
Rolling Thunder Revue: a Bob Dylan Story 4/5
Avengers: Endgame 3.5/5
Smithereens (1982) 4/5
They Were Expendable (1945) 3.5/5
Our Man in Havana (1959) 3.5/5
The Two Killings of Sam Cooke (2019) 3.5/5
Captain Marvel 3/5
Godzilla: King of the Monsters 2/5
Cat People (1982) 2.5/5
Deadwood: The Movie 4.5/5

Oops, Our Man in Havana should be 3/5. Very important.

The Raft is worth a gander; great post-script from the perspective of women in their 70s to a floating skinner box gone right somehow... notably the story mentioned in this article never comes up!
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-i-plotted-a-murder-on-the-infamous-sex-raft

relaxer (2019 potrykus) 4/10
burning (2018 lee chang-dong) 7/10
basquiat (1996 schnabel) 8/10
fool's mate (1956 rivette) 5/10
camille claudel (1989 bruno nyutten) 7.5/10
baby boy (2001 singleton) 8/10
*suspiria (1977 argento) 6/10
at the heart of gold: inside the usa gymnastics scandal (2019 carr) 8/10
white boy rick (2018 yann demange) 3/10

Deadwood (Minahan, 2019) 7/10
Support the Girls (Bujalski, 2018) 7/10
*BlacKkKlansman (Lee, 2018) 8/10
The Time of Their Lives (Goldby, 2017) 3/10
Mid90s (Hill, 2018) 6/10
Burning (Lee, 2018) 8/10
Halloween (Green, 2018) 4/10
Ava (Foroughi, 2017) 5/10
Wildlife (Dano, 2018) 7/10
The Chocolate War (Gordon, 1988) 6/10

His First Flame (Edwards, 1927)
Pure Feud (Henabery, 1934)
Flirting With Fate (Cabanne, 1916)
The Furs (Sennett, 1912)
Uncle (Jires, 1959)
Framing Father (Roberts, 1942)
Mail Trouble (French, 1942)
Reaching for the Moon (Emerson, 1917)
1900 (Bertolucci, 1976)
*Take a Chance (Goulding, 1918)
Entr'acte (Clair, 1924)
Feeling Good (Etaix, 1966)
As Long as You've Got Your Health (Etaix, 1966)

*Wanda (Loden, 1970) - 10/10
The Star (Heisler, 1952) - 7/10
*The Image Book (Godard, 2018) - 10/10
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Mizoguchi, 1939) - 8/10
The Thin Man Goes Home (Thorpe, 1945) - 7/10
A Perfect Couple (Altman, 1979) - 6/10
Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956) - 8/10
Documenteur (Varda, 1981) - 7/10
Quintet (Altman, 1979) - 5/10
ABC Africa (Kiarostami, 2001) - 9/10
I Am Wanda (Raganelli, 1991) - 8/10
*American Psycho (Harron, 2000) - 9/10
The Gay Bride (Conway, 1934) 6/10
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Mungiu, 2007) - 9/10
*Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet, 1975) - 10/10
La Ciénaga (Martel, 2001) - 4/10
I Hate But Love (Kurahara, 1962) - 7/10
Le Plaisir (Ophüls, 1952) - 8/10
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Cimino, 1974) - 7/10
The Beaches of Agnès (Varda, 2008) - 8/10

Nights of Cabiria (1957)
Point Break (1991)
Papillon (1973)
Tangerine (2015)
Hail Caesar (2016)
The Devil & Daniel Webster (1941)
John Wick 3 (2019)
Mystery Train (1989)
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
Where Danger Lives (1950)

Hail Caesar quickly climbing up my favorite Coens list. Point Break still sucks but I'll never not enjoy watching Anthony Kiedis get smacked around. Where Danger Lives a serviceable but fun noir with Robert Mitchum and a surreal interlude involving some kind of rural moustache festival(?). Tangerine and Nights of Cabiria both much funnier than I was expecting, Giulietta Masina was outrageously fun to watch. Anyone have any recs on what of hers to see next? I guess La Strada?

yes, followed by Variety Lights, then I guess Il Bidone, Juliet of the Spirits, Ginger & Fred. She did a prison film (non-Fellini) w/ Anna Magnani, Hell in the City, if you can find it.

She's in Europa '51 as well.

so I saw, but I don't remember her!

*The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956, Hitchcock) 8/10
A Bigger Splash (1973, Hazan) 8/10
*Conversation Piece (1974, Visconti) 8/10
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928,Epstein) 8/10
Time Stood Still (1959, Olmi) 6/10
The Nun (1966, Rivette) 7/10
FM (1978, Alonzo) 3/10
The Sundowners (1960, Zinnemann) 6/10
The Dancing Masters (1943, St. Clair) 6/10
The Souvenir (2019, Hogg) 9/10

Toy Story 4 (Cooley, 6/10)
Giant Little Ones (Behrman, 2019) 6/10
Ward 5B (2019) 7/10
The Souvenir (Hogg, 2019) 8/10
Dark Money (Reed, 2018) 8/10
* Fox and His Friends (Fassbinder, 1975) 8/10
Medea (Pasolini, 1970) 5/10
* Playtime (Tati, 1967) 9/10
* Le Samourai (Melville, 1967) 9/10
The Prisoner (1955, Glenville) 4/10

*Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam and Jones - 1975) 7/10
*Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Roach - 1997) 7
What Price Hollywood (Cukor, 1932) 8
The Lineup (Don Siegel, 1958) 7; terrible police sections based on a forgotten tv show
Rocketman (Fletcher, 2019) 7; better as jukebox musical than biopic
Teen Titans Go To the Movies (Michail and Horvath, 2018) 6
The Decline of Western Civilization (Spheeris, 1981) 8
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (Spheeris, 1988) 8

I expected Den of Thieves to suck - it's 2 hours 20, it stars Gerard Butler and 50 Cent, and it seems like a made-for-basic-cable Heat knockoff. But it's actually a lot smarter and better written than that; as heist movies go, you could do a lot worse.

Medea (Pasolini, 1970) 5/10

I thought this film was fascinating and it was so visually beautiful

Pasolini is a recent discovery for me. I've seen 4 of his films now and they've all been fantastic

Heh -- I've had the opposite impression. I got Teorema and can't understand why he chose such portentous framing.

Medea (Pasolini, 1970) 5/10

I thought this film was fascinating and it was so visually beautiful

Wait- so 5/10 is a good rating??